


Fairy Godmothers

by orphan_account



Category: Cinderella Phenomenon (Visual Novel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 15:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17103440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which the Cinderella plot is hatched.





	Fairy Godmothers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mementomoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mementomoe/gifts).



It wasn't often that Delora visited the Marchen these days, and while the staff and the current guests were used to her erratic appearances, Parfait felt her absence keenly. They had built this place together, both to shelter those poor souls touched by the Fairy Tail Curse, and to show some small part of this scarred world that witch and fairy could still work together, to strengthen the alliances frayed nearly to tatters by the witches' great war. And that, of course, was exactly why Delora was so frequently absent. The last thing they could afford was a resurgence of that great conflict, another tide of horror and despair and death. Which meant keeping a close eye on the heir to the Crystallum Tenebrarum – and the heir to the kingdom that had perhaps been the hardest hit by the last war.

It would have been simpler if one of them could have approached openly, joined the court as an advisor or a tutor for the princess. But Parfait was needed to protect the Marchen and to guide the other remaining fairies, and Delora...

Witches had been mistrusted even before the war, their cunning magics and their affiliation with darkness making them easy targets for suspicion. The Witch Hunts had been the worst upswell of that suspicion, spurred on by Grimm's tales, but it had hardly been the first. And now, after the war, after the curses that had ravaged the land, tearing families apart and driving humans mad...

Witches weren't hunted, but they were feared, and few had as much reason to fear them as the king. Approaching openly had never been an option for Delora.

Fortunately, she had always been skilled at illusion and transformation, which had allowed her to take the likeness of one of the dolls that, rumour had it, were beloved by the princess where nothing else was. This had allowed her to secret herself in the royal quarters, to watch over the princess and evaluate just how great a threat she might be. It also made it difficult to get away – one of the first things she'd learned was that the princess was jealous with her possessions, and would notice if one of her dolls had been moved an inch, let alone had vanished entirely.

She still slept, however, as all mortal beings did, and so Delora could escape occasionally by night, could return to the warmth of the Marchen to share what she had learned, and spend a few hours in kinder company.

Much kinder company.

Parfait watched in alarm as her friend paced the floor of the parlour, heels striking hard enough to sound even through the rugs; if she stalked any more fiercely, she might well strike sparks without resorting to any magic at all. 

“She's getting worse,” the witch said grimly. “I know we hoped that being out from under Hildyr's influence might help, but it hasn't. She's the same vain, selfish, cruel little brat she's ever been, and the more she pushes people away, the more she blames them for leaving.”

“Surely she can't be that bad,” Parfait protested, but even to her own ears, the response sounded weak. Everything Delora had told her of the girl reinforced the image she painted. Dismissive of her father and stepsister's attempts to connect with her, resentful of her stepmother and new siblings, contemptuous of anyone who she viewed as beneath her – those qualities would be dangerous enough even in someone poised to become a mundane ruler. Had she been nothing more than the child of a king and queen, there would still be revolt to worry about – even with much of her time spent within the Marchen's confines, Parfait had heard rumblings of discontent, insistence that the princess Emelaigne would make a far better ruler than the crown princess Lucette. But in the heir to a powerful witch, and to the Crystallum Tenebrarum itself...?

“She's a disaster,” Delora replied, as though she'd snatched the words directly from Parfait's own thoughts. “She's the second coming of Hildyr. If we let her get her hands on the crystal, there's no telling how much damage she'll cause.” Her voice hitched, just a little, the change slight enough that anyone less attuned to her emotions than Parfait wouldn't have noticed at all. “There's no telling how many people will die by her whims if they don't give her exactly what she wants.”

“And what does she want?” Parfait asked cautiously, and reached out on her friend's next pass, to catch her hand and tug her down towards the couch, as though she could blunt her pain with touch and with stillness.

She couldn't, of course. Her magic had never worked that way. Wounds of the body, she could heal, but wounds of the heart? If she'd been capable of that, the war might never have come to pass in the first place. Even so, while Delora resisted for a moment, the restless energy all but crackling along her skin, in the end she came willingly, tucking herself in beside Parfait and resting her head on her shoulder.

“To be alone,” she said after a moment. “Or to have her mother back. Which would actually manage to be worse.”

Parfait only just managed to suppress a shudder at the thought. A part of her might miss the Hildyr that once was, but that woman had died long before her mortal form was cut down. The Hildyr who had been would have been horrified at the woman she'd become, to say nothing of the woman her daughter seemed poised to become.

“There must be some good in her,” Parfait ventured.

“If it is, it's buried so deep you'd need a team of miners working around the clock for a decade to excavate it,” Delora replied tartly, then paused, going stone still.

Somehow, that stillness was even more unnerving than her pacing had been.

“Delora...”

The witch sat up straight, seizing Parfait's other hand in her own, and stared at her intently. “Do you trust me?”

“You know I do. But it worries me that you have to ask.”

“Even I need some reassurance sometimes,” Delora replied, her tone dismissive. “You know why the curses were originally developed. Our people might have clashed over them, but you know at one point, they had good intentions.”

“Every fairy knows that,” Parfait replied, brow furrowing as she studied her friend intently. “We didn't disagree with your intent, just the methods. But what does that have to... No. Delora, you can't.”

“On the contrary, I can't not. If there's even an ounce of good in that wretched girl, we need to excavate it before her eighteenth birthday. And that certainly isn't going to happen at the palace – if it was, it already would have. We need her here, where she can't lock herself away from the world and pretend she's the only person in it.”

“But what if she doesn't break the curse?”

Delora shrugged, and withdrew her hands from Parfait's. “Then the curse should prevent her from coming into her power, and the Crystallum Tenebrarum will find another bearer. One a little more suited to wielding that kind of power without being consumed by it.”

“But she's the princess. If she's cursed, the king will send out his knights to cure her, not send her here.”

A hint of a wicked smile curved Delora's lips, though her eyes remained solemn. “Oh, leave that to me. I know just the story.”

She sketched a sigil in the air before her, its afterimage burning purple for a few seconds, even after she'd disappeared.

Three days later, a young girl dressed in rags, the spitting image of the dead queen save for the gold of her eyes, stepped over the Marchen's threshold.


End file.
